Archery bows have been around for a long time and come in many forms. Archery bows essentially started as simple structures that included a string attached to a long shaft and the bending of the shaft produced the energy needed for the string to propel an arrow. Over the years, this simple design has been improved to increase shooting speeds, improve accuracy and to reduce holding forces when the bow and arrow are in the shooting position. The advances in the design have resulted in significant improvements of the once simple archery bow. This even included the introduction of the crossbow that combined the function and features of an archery bow with the shooting style of a long gun. However, even with all of the advancements in this industry, archery bows are only configured to hold a single arrow wherein the user must manually load each arrow between shots. As a result, even though the bow and arrow have been improved, the archer must reload his bow between each shot, which greatly reduces the ability to quickly shoot multiple arrows. While the skilled archer can quickly pull arrows from his or her quiver between shots, this still takes time and can take a significant amount of time for the less skilled archer. Therefore, there is a need for a bow that can hold multiple arrows or projectiles wherein the archer can shoot multiple projectiles quickly without reloading the bow.
The same is true with toy bows. While these toy products have been around for many years and have enjoyed many of the same advancements, toy boys also have the same inherent shortcoming wherein they are only capable of holding a single arrow or projectile.
Accordingly, there is a need for a bow that can support more than one arrow and can quickly move the multiple arrows into a firing position without reloading the bow.
For this application, a bow is any bow like structure that can shoot a projectile in a way similar to an archery bow. This can include, but is not limited to, a traditional long bow having a long shaft with a string connected between the ends, a compound bow that includes performance enhancers, a crossbow, and/or any other variation or style known in the archery field or will be known in the field. These bows include toy bows that can shoot a projectile similar to that of a real bow referenced above, but which are used as toys and even youth bows intended for older children and which can shoot more traditional arrows. The projectiles can by any projectile configured to be launched by a bow and which can vary in view of the use of the bow. Further, the projectiles can be newly designed projectiles that are designed to take advantage of the invention of this application. These projectiles can include, but are not limited to, a traditional archery arrow, hunting arrows, non-lethal arrows, target arrows, arrows with modified ends (such as with suction cups or Velcro), foam projectiles (such as those used in NERF products sold by HASBRO. Arrows are a subset of projectiles and can be any arrow like projectile including, but not limited to, traditional archery arrow, hunting arrows, non-lethal arrows, target arrows, arrows with modified ends (such as with suction cups or Velcro), foam arrows, but which directly engage a bow string. And, variations of these examples provided above. These toy bows have been successful over the years and come in a wide variety of configurations. Essentially, these toy bows launch projectiles based on stored energy in a string, air power and/or spring power.